Dallas’ Infamous Plot Twist Didn’t Just Shock Viewers

As shower scenes go, there are arguably only two that have made permanent imprints upon pop-culture: Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic scene from Psycho and that of Bobby Ewing’s surprise return in Dallas’ season nine finale.

The latter, which aired 40 years ago on May 16, 1986, marked Dallas star Patrick Duffy’s return to the hit CBS prime time soap opera after his popular character was seemingly murdered when hit by a car in the show’s season seven finale.

While the plan was for Dallas to continue without Bobby, ratings for the powerhouse series started to slip without Duffy’s presence. (Also, star Larry Hagman, who played oil tycoon J.R. Ewing, reportedly missed having his costar around and was very vocal about it.) The series then worked out a way to bring Bobby back via one of the most infamous plot twists in TV history:  The ninth season would end with Bobby’s ex-wife and love of his life, Pam (Victoria Principal), waking up to discover someone in her bathroom. That someone was Bobby, who turned to her mid-shower with a smile and a cheery “good morning.”

Viewers were shocked (so was Principal, but we’ll get to that in a bit). They were also very eager for season ten to start, which would reveal that both Bobby’s death and the entire ninth season were all a dream. The new season would pick up where season eight left off. At the time, this was an unprecedented creative choice.

In honor of Bobby’s resurrection turning 40, Duffy spoke with the Television Academy about when he learned of the fateful reversal, how it impacted Dallas spinoff Knots Landing and why his costar was kept in the dark about it.

Television Academy: At the end of Dallas’ seventh season, you decided to leave the show. What was that year like while you were away? Were you busy doing other projects or just decompressing?

Patrick Duffy: I was not decompressing, but I also didn't do a lot of projects. I did a movie of the week, I went to England, I did a couple of commercials.

How did you get word that the show wanted to Bobby back?

When Larry Hagman called me and said, "come out to Malibu, I want to talk to you," I knew exactly what he wanted to talk about. I turned to my wife at the time and said, "They're going to ask me to come back on the show." She then said, "You can't come back unless that last season was a dream." Now, they didn't take her idea, but she had the same concept that [showrunner] Leonard Katzman had. "It was all a dream," that was Katzman’s idea — start to finish. Hagman didn't even know; he just knew that he wanted me back.

Were you aware that the ratings had slipped and that fans were not happy?

I knew the ratings [had dipped] only because my agent was talking to me [about it], and I knew people weren't happy because Hagman and I almost talked at least once or twice a week. He’d say, "Patrick, this is terrible. I'm not having any fun anymore." I said, "I'm sorry, buddy. I'm just trying to make a go of it here on my own."

How did that conversation go when you went to Hagman’s house?

Well, first we got drunk [laughs]. We went to a Mexican restaurant in Malibu, and all he had to say was, "damn it, come on back." I said, "okay," and that was it.

The other thing that I maybe have told one other person in an interview is that somebody in the restaurant had said [to the press], "I saw Patrick Duffy and Larry Hagman having lunch here in Malibu. Maybe he will come back on the show."

Then, I went and had a meeting with Leonard Katzman. He said, "I've got a plan. The plan is you're going to come back. It's all been a dream. We're going to erase season eight and start over from the end of season seven." Honestly, I would have done anything. He could have said, "I'm gonna put reindeer antlers on you, strap you to the front of a truck and we'll say you were wounded." It didn't matter to me, I just wanted to come back home.

Did Katzman ever share other scenarios to bring you back, or why he thought this was the one to use?

This was the only one he knew he was going to use. We filmed two red herrings on the Dallas soundstages, without the cast and with a skeleton crew. It was back in the day when you could keep things secret.

We filmed me taking bandages off my face in a hospital bed. I open up a mirror and say, "That's perfect" The other red herring was me walking into the Southfork Ranch living room with nobody there and just looking around, saying, "they're not gonna believe this." That was going to sort of be Bobby’s twin brother or [doppelgänger]. Then, we did the shower scene.

Do you remember what Victoria's reaction was to you coming back?

Absolutely — nobody knew [I was back] until it aired. Everybody [in the cast] knew I was coming back, but nobody knew how. That entire shower scene was put in an attaché case and taken by a courier on an airplane to New York, and spliced on to the end of the episode.

I was home watching [the episode] with my family when it gets to the end of the show. Victoria gets out of bed, walks into the bathroom and then you see her reach for the door. You only see the door opening and I turn around and say, “good morning.” Not ten seconds after it aired, my phone rang — it was Victoria, screaming. That scene [that Victoria shot] featured Pam opening the shower door to [find the Dallas character] Mark Grayson (John Beck), Pam’s husband for the last season. Victoria told me she thought the scene was cut because it was supposed to be somewhere in the middle of the finale. But, when she saw it at the end of the episode, she was thinking, “what the hell?” That was Victoria's reaction. It was fantastic, it was adorable.

Were there any concerns about how the audience would react to erasing that entire season to bring Bobby back?

That's a question for the hierarchies, but I was happy to come back. Hagman was happy to have me back. I have since found out, however, that some of the fanbase was not upset that I was coming back, but rather that they felt short changed by having invested a year [that was erased]. Our fans, to this day, are very loyal. The cast now — the ones that are still alive — we'll do signing events together, and it's like Woodstock. [Fans are] just lined up and thrilled to see everybody, so I think those people felt a little short changed. But they didn't leave — the ratings came back.

I don't want to toot my own horn too much here, because Leonard was absent from the show during the same year that I was. He really was the quality control of Dallas. One of the reasons Hagman was upset was that I wasn't there — and we loved working together. And, in terms of the storylines, the show took a real turn. They had international drug cartels and Larry was not happy with all of that. He thought Dallas was all about the Ewing family, greed and the inner workings of treachery — and then [the family] coming back together. Those were the things that  made Dallas successful. He thought the show was going to die, so he was happy [that Bobby came back], I was happy and the fans came back, thank goodness.

How did it impact Knots Landing? At the time, the show didn’t lean as much into being a Dallas spinoff like they had in the early seasons.

Where they had the hardest time was on Knots Landing. On that show, they were mourning Bobby's death. Bobby’s brother, Gary (Ted Shackelford), named one of his new children Bobby after [my character] died. So Dead Bobby is alive and they can't erase him. It was a little shaky there for a while.

Once you were back on Dallas, you stayed on through the end of the series in season 14. Was there ever a time in that window that you thought about leaving again?

No. Now, the hierarchy knew that Dallas was not going to go on another season, so they pulled out all the stops [for the series finale]. They did their version of It's a Wonderful Life, which is ludicrous. Actor Joel Grey played an angel who showed J.R. how things would be if J.R. wasn’t alive. That was not a high point, in my opinion, nor in Larry's. But we knew it was going to be gone after year 14. Two weeks after we were officially canceled, however, I started Step by Step [the ABC family sitcom with Suzanne Somers], which ran for seven years. I know Dallas wouldn't have continued on for another seven years, but if it did, I would have been happy to continue with it.

The Dallas revival came around in 2012 on TNT, but it only ran three seasons. Why do you think it didn’t go longer?

It didn't go longer because Michael Wright, the President of TNT, left and he was our champion. He loved Dallas. He knew that the show was good — he would have kept it on — but he left. You can't blame him for [leaving], but it left a vacuum. TNT was without a president for months.

Instead of biting the bullet, and finding somebody and plugging them in there, they put the head of the sports department in charge of the drama arm. He canceled their two top-rated shows: Major Crimes and Dallas. It surprised everybody. The [revival’s] executive producers, Michael Robin and Cynthia Cidre, were shocked. We all were.

If somebody came around and said, “hey, we want to revive the show again and we want you to play Bobby,” what would your answer be?

It would be the same as it was just prior to doing the reboot: “What's the script? Who's in charge?” If it were Cynthia and Mike Robin again, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

I've talked about revisiting it with Mike Robin, and the problem is — the rights and the finances for Dallas are so convoluted. I don't even know how it works, but it's like a Gordian knot. Lorimar, Sony, Warner Bros., Telepictures — all of them still have a legal say in the rights to Dallas. Mike said nobody can figure out financially how to do another reboot. Now, if they figure that out with Mike and Cynthia involved, I would do it again.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.